


Cunning Folk

by RadioHalo (coldthing)



Category: Doctor Who (2005)
Genre: Female!Doctor - Freeform
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-01-20
Updated: 2016-01-20
Packaged: 2018-05-11 06:38:22
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 9,922
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/5617153
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/coldthing/pseuds/RadioHalo
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Rose finds herself stranded in the past with a dying TARDIS and an injured companion as her only clues.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Cunning Folk

**Author's Note:**

> Notes:  AU after S4 ‘Journey’s End’  
> Started ages ago, but only recently finished, take that as an indicator of quality.  
> 
> The Battle of Maldon, and Tolkien’s accompanying fanfiction was probably supposed to be a much larger part of the plot, but I can’t for the life of me remember what I was trying to do.  Make of that what you will.

 

Rose wakes to the grinding of the TARDIS’s engine, her half of the Doctor-Donna’s arm slung across her waist. His hair is flattened to one side and his eyebrows are tightly drawn, she could faintly hear him grinding his teeth. It was a rare occasion when she didn’t have to wake him from some earth-shattering nightmare. Sometimes he woke her up flailing and sobbing and she would press her forehead against his and tell him it was ok, and he was safe. Slowly but surely he was slowly getting better.

              The sound of engines is gone, it had probably been a dream she decides as she turns over and strokes her hand against her Doctor’s face. He relaxes into her touch and she drifts back to sleep.

 

999

 

              Her hands touch wet moss; she is thigh deep in stagnant water, her feet sliding across the slimy bottom of the pool. She staggers, haphazardly reaching out for a handhold. Her fingers touch wet metal and she pulls herself towards it, slimy tendrils of plant matter clinging to her legs. She pulls herself onto the bare metal, and almost vomits. There is an overwhelming organic stink of decay. The air is thick and humid, she’s sweating, and a wetness   that is not the stagnant water is creeping up her back.

              There is very little light; it is hazy and indistinct, not coming from any central source. As her eyes adjust, she can see the details, she is pinned in by hanging plants, Spanish moss, ivy, and honeysuckle wound around filigreed metal.

She is in a room overgrown and devoured by rotting and dying plants. She struggles out of the pool of water and stands up on the metal grating of the floor, picking her way through slime and plant matter.  She emerges from the curtain of plants into the control room of a TARDIS, or at least she thinks it is. The center console is half buried under a bloom of flowers that smell like rotting corpses, the column is cracked and plants are starting to crawl inside. Rose steps forward pulling plants off the consol. However, they’ve grown into the very machinery of the TARDIS, or out of the machinery, she thinks as she yanks the roots out of a junction box and takes multicolored wires with it.  She can’t tell where the wires end and the roots begin.

              She shuffles along the side, avoiding the regularly spaced pools of water in the floor, clearing the awful flowers off the console.

In the distance, a deep low bell tolls, a not-noise, a moving wave of vibration that shakes the plants that cling to the filigreed edges of the control room’s superstructure and suddenly she can hear someone coughing and gasping. Water splashes and Rose runs towards it, almost slipping on the slick wet metal.

              It’s a girl, young, no older than she is, she’s trying to scramble out of one of the water pools, but there are vines wrapped around her waist, hauling her back in. She scrabbles for purchase on the slick floor.

              Rose grabs the girl’s arms, ripping vines away from her body and hauls the girl out of the pool.  There is blood running from her eyes that are as dark as pools of petrol. Blood is dripping from her ears.

              “Ah,” the girl gasps triumphant “It worked…” her voice is a deep northern slur that tugs on Rose’s heart.

“My name is Rose,” she says supporting the girl’s weight on her shoulder, she’s heavier than she looks with all the water. “Are you ok? What happened to you”?

              Half smile quirks at her mouth “My, Rose” she murmurs. “You came.” she coughs, dark liquid oozing from her mouth. “Almost there”

Then Rose can hear it, above the not-noise of the cloister bell is the rumbling wheeze of the TARDIS’s engines as it struggles to land.

Rose slips in the muck that covers the control rooms’ floor again, the girl landing on top of her. Somewhere on the controls the arrival chime sounds.

She struggles to her feet again, hauling the girl to her feet; she drapes her arm over her shoulder and starts to make her way across the control room. The stagnant pools are hexagons at regular intervals with rusted guardrails sticking dangerously up out of the overgrowth around them

The water is dark and opaque, with a slickness of oil shimming on the surface, the lap of it against the walls of the pools is now the only noise other than their breathing. The cloister bell is suddenly silent.

Finally, Rose pushes the TARDIS’s door open, after the dimness of the control room; the bright summer sunlight hurts her eyes. She feels the girl stagger at her shoulder, and she heaves them both out of the stinking TARDIS onto the dry leaves of a forest floor.

The girl immediately starts coughing again, blood and bile pooling on the ground in front of her. When the convulsions finally stop, the girl wipes her arm against her mouth and takes a few deep breaths.

Rose looks back at the TARDIS; it looks much like before, a few patches of fresh paint show where repairs had been made to its armor.  Tendrils of ivy are emerging from the broken windows. She can still smell rotting plant matter from here.

The girl lets out a racking full body sob that cuts right to Rose’s soul. “It’s dying,” she rasps. “It can’t die” She tries to get to her feet and lunge forwards towards the police box, but then stops short as if realizing that she had just escaped from it, and falls, her legs unable to support her weight. Rose tries to stop her as she struggles to her feet only to fall again. She starts to cough again; Rose rubs her back until the convulsions subside. This time she doesn’t try to get up again, and instead huddles in Rose’s arms sobbing.

“Hey, hey” Rose tells her. “Its ok, your safe” she brushes wet plant matter off the girl’s cheek. She’s pretty, in an odd way, her nose to small for her eyes, a bad haircut and nails bitten down to the quick; she’s wearing fitted black jeans, and oxblood boots. Her top is an oversized white dress shirt that is soaked though and clinging to her skin, she has nothing on under it, but she’s so small it hardly matters.

She looks awful, blood and tears mixing on her face, dark circles highlighting her eyes that seem more bottomless pupil than anything else.

Rose doubts she looks any better herself, shivering in her wet jammies, tendrils of water plants and mud sticking to her legs.

“It’s dying” she girl wails. “It hurts…” she trails off into incoherent mumbling pressing the heels of her palms against her eyes as if attempting to block the pain.

999

 

He’s young, dark hair, dark eyes, olive skin, “My name is Tidewald,” he says as he helps her up. He’s wearing a simple brown smock over leather trousers and boots.  A  wooden rosary hangs from the rope belt around his waist. “I come from St Christopher’s at Ely, up over the hill” He indicates to a tree covered hillock behind him.  “I heard a terrible scream. So I came running”

Rose stares at him for a minute in confusion. “My friend she’s collapsed. She’s very sick! Can you help her” she blurts, she doesn’t even know the girl’s name, but she has a TARDIS, and she knew Rose?

The TARDIS could mean any number of things. The oozing, hungry plants inside made it hard to tell if it was her Doctor’s, but the girl was definitely his type.

In her lap the girl is convulsing again, her brow is hot and sweat is beading across her forehead despite the mild weather and her wet clothes. Rose brushes her hand across her forehead smoothing her dark hair away.

Tidewald kneels down by them and puts his hand on the girl’s neck, feeling for a pulse. Satisfied, he heaves her up in his arms, holding her like a bride. Rose staggers to her feet, dry leaves, and grass sticking to her wet legs.

“Where are you from” Tidewald asks conversationally once they’ve been walking for a little while.

“Far away” Rose replies, biting her lower lip. “We’re travelers”

“Then god is with you, Christopher is the patron saint of travelers,” Tidewald says as if its “my order cares for the weary who pass by on the way to London”

Rose bites her lip, she doesn’t know the saints, nor does she believe in blessings.

“We stopped at the right place then” Rose says, she can’t help but doubt the boy’s words, coincidences are anything but when the Doctor is near, as if the laws of probability bend themselves to his will.

Tidewald makes a humming noise of agreement and adjusts the girl’s body in his arms.  They walked in silence for a while more before Rose dares speak again

“What year is it?” she asks

“991” Tidewald replies mildly. “You must have been traveling a long time to not know the year”

“Yeah” Rose replies morosely. She pulls a tendril of plant from her hair.

 

999

 

Tidewald takes them to the monastery at Ely and lays her on a straw mattress in a private cell.

The  courtyard is filled with  beds, men in various states of dying are being seen to by other monks in blood stained habits. Inside the keep the sound of groans echoes off the high stone walls.

Tidewald calls for the Abbot, and the man that comes is also unexpectedly young for such a position. Rose had always imagined monks as old men with tonsures, but  the Abbot is barely older than Tidewald.

Tidewald wraps a blanket around Rose’s shoulders as they watch as the Abbot lay his head against the girl’s chest listening for a heartbeat, He cleans to dried blood off her skin and checks for major injuries. His hands move carefully and confidently, apparently used to touching distressed bodies.

 The girl tries to move feebly, to push the Abbot away but Tidewald brings a cool wet cloth to dab at her overheated skin, and tea made from valerian to make her sleep.  Rose is to cold and wet to make any kind of contribution.

When the Abbot is finished, he turns back to Tidewald and Rose. “Good work” he says “I fear for her heart, but her fever is breaking.” He smiles, cocking her head to the wounded outside “I should have some tonic for her. Until then watch her and above all keep her calm”

 Tidewald inclines his head in agreement with the Abbot and Rose nods as she wraps the rough blanket closer around her shoulders and shivers.

Tidewald rises. “I will get you some food and proper clothing” he says and shuffles out. Rose lets out a deep breath when the door closes behind him.

Even asleep the girl is restless. Rose stays by her side, taking her hand as the girl convulses and grips Rose’s hand tightly.

 Tidewald brings her some dry clothes, little more than a coarse monk’s robe, and a plate of stew and hard bread.  Rose shoos him out of the room while she changes. The girl’s eyelids flicker as she shifts in her sleep. She hasn’t had a chance to catch her breath.

The night begins with her asleep with her doctor, then the vague memory of the TARDIS’s engines, wheezing screeching, and pumping harder than she’s ever heard it before; when she opens her eyes, she’s plunged into the slimy water, plants grasping at her legs

“Time Scoop” the girl’s eyes flicker open, her hand tightening around Rose’s so tight that it hurts. “Time scoop…to... to…bring you here” her teeth clench “Needed you here, for the TARDIS…”

Rose tries to pry her hand out of the girl’s grip; she can feel her knuckles grinding against each other as the hand tightens like a vice.

 “But why, why did you bring me here? Where is the doctor?” She feels her voice crack.  “Please, let my hand go. You’re hurting me”

The girl groans, her grip slackens, and she tries to sit up, but Rose pushes her back down. She tries to resist and push back, but the sudden strength is gone, she slumps “Please. In the TARDIS, my tool belt please” her eyes flicker again, and she’s struggling to stay awake.  Rose holds her aching hand as the girl succumbs to the valerian again.

She finds Tidewald outside the door, shifting nervously from one foot to the other; he has an armload of blankets. “Can you watch her?” she asks, he nods and bites his lip.

Rose makes her way back to the TARDIS in a panic. When she finds it, it seems to have put down roots, the blue painted wood contorting and delving into the ground, more vines twisting out of the windows. She can smell it dying from across the clearing. She pulls at the door, not only is it now ill fitting as it twists into the ground but she can feel the tumblers rattling in the lock.

 She still has her key; hanging on a fine gold chain around her neck like one wears a cross or good luck charm. She carefully unhooks the clasp and then holding her breath, she raises it to the lock.

The sound of the key sliding smoothly into the keyhole is enough to make her want to scream with joy. The key turns smoothly in the lock and she opens the door to see a wall of vegetation blocking her.

She pushes the hanging plants aside as she picks her way through roots and debris. More vines have curled around the center console and more of the awful flowers have sprouted on the control panels. Thick root systems are spreading out across the floor weaving in and out of the filigree. Dark algae and petrol shines on the surface of the pools.

She can still hear the cloister bell in the distance again and feel the hum of great engines under her feet. All around her the leaves rustle even without wind, she shivers and pushes a curtain of flowering clematis out of her way.

The control column is dark, and the crack is spreading across its glistening surface. She can hear her heart beat thundering in her ears. She pushes another curtain of plants out of the way and reaches for the console.

Her hands brush across the corroded metal; she feels a deep answering rumble in her bones. The TARDIS likes her; it knows her inside and out. In an uncharacteristically quiet moment after she became and un-become the entity that called itself the Bad Wolf, the Doctor sat her down in the Rain Room and calmly explained to her what had happened. She had sat at the picnic table in the rain and screamed.

So this weak rumble confirms it. This is the Doctor’s TARDIS, but she had suspected as much already.

She wishes she had a light as she carefully paws around on the ground for the tool belt, the floor is covered by burnt and damaged metal scrap, and for a while she despairs on finding it.

She finds herself following the sound of the cloister bell through the hallways, trailing her hand along the uneven corridor walls that feel less and less like metal and more and more like flesh the deeper she goes.

Where previously there had been indistinct source less light in the halls, now there are spirals and whorls of bioluminescence on the walls, their glow eerie and unsteady.

Under the roots that snake across the floor, there is elaborate tile work, the angles of which don’t quite match up, but nonetheless make up a complete whole.

Rose rests her hand on the wall, catching her breath, under her fingers the TARDIS seems to echo her breath.

The cloister bell is closer now, she can hear the vibration of its tolls in her bones. The sound is directional as if it is leading it to itself, to their heart of the TARDIS’s defense systems.

She emerges into the cloister chamber, a circular chamber around a deep well, above it hangs, suspended in the air, is the huge dark shape of the cloister bell. It doesn’t look like a bell,  she couldn’t say exactly what it looks like, every time she thinks she has grasped its shape it slips away from her.

Here in the cloister chamber the noise is almost deafening, the bell vibrates the air all around her, the well below it is a dizzying pool of blackness that ripples shaking its surface with every toll of the bell. She isn’t sure if the well is full of liquid or just a yawning voice into space, or something in between, she keeps her distance from it sticking close to the wall as she inches her way around the room.

She sees the tool belt before long, a heavy leather strap, a large silver buckle with a swirling circular design. Along the sides are sewn pockets and slings for a variety of tools, some easily identifiable, some less so. A sonic screwdriver lies a few feet away, cracked open and inert, like something had tried to rip it apart.

She picks up the screw driver and turns it over in her hands, something rattles inside the cracked casing. Rose stuffs is back into one of the slings on the tool belt. The belt is unexpectedly heavy as she hefts it up over her shoulder and begins to pick her way back over the exit.

Plants rustle and try to catch at her legs as she tries to find her way back to the control room, the TARDIS doesn’t seem to be rearranging herself to stop her from leaving, but the grabby plant roots that try to catch on the monks robe she wears seem almost pleading.

Why doesn’t the TARDIS want her to go?

Finally she emerges into the remains  into the remains of the control room, tripping over roots and debris.

Suddenly the TARDIS brings up an image in front of her, causing her to stumble to a halt as she tries not to hit it.

 It is  a flickering blue light projection, a girl, caught in a loop of speaking to some one beyond the reach of the camera, she waves and points to something behind her that the camera does not catch.

A companion? The girl is dressed in a neat tailored dress, archaic in its style, her long  dark hair pinned into waves. The girl is familiar,  the girl she had hauled out of the TARDIS, she can tell that much,  even with the different clothes and hair, but  this girl’s controlled precision is nothing like the girl she had saved.

Rose reaches out to the projection, knowing that she can’t touch it, and the projection shifts around her fingers.

“Why are you showing me this?” She asks the TARDIS. “who is this?” Rose trails off, unable to finish.

The girl on her animated loop waves to some one  again,  her eyes are pale, blue or grey, unlike  the girl she had saved.  Rose stares at it again, and then the images continues past where it had previously stopped.

Some one else steps into the camera’s field of vision. A man, the Doctor? He is tall and lanky, almost  to tall and thin to be human, with unkempt dark hair, and long horsy  face. Hes wearing close fitting too short jeans with holes in the knees,  a wrinkled white dress shirt under  a leather jacket clearly cut for some one much more muscular than him. He has a black scarf hung loosely around his neck and a sonic screw driver tucked into one of the pockets of his jacket.

There is no sound,  The Doctor puts his hands on his hips triumphantly, points to something in the distance and the companion punches him in  the arm  covering her mouth as she laughs. The Doctor looks suitably cowed, but then he recovers and grabs her by the shoulders, saying something emphatically and pulls her out of the camera’s view.

The image cuts out, and leaves Rose alone in the darkness. She runs for the sliver of light of the door,  not caring that branches and vines grab at her arms.

999

When Rose returns to the St Christopher’s Tidewald greets her at the gate. “Your friend, she is awake,” he says.

They find the girl awake, dried blood on her chin huddled in the corner of the room at the furthest point from the door. Her petrol black eyes flicker from Rose’s face to the heavy tool belt slung over her shoulder “You got it” the momentary joy in her eyes warms Rose’s heart. The girl tries to climb out of the bed, throwing the blankets aside, but only manages to stumble and fall to her knees.

“Don’t move” Rose tells her as she rushes forward to catch her tiny frame. “You’ll hurt yourself” she feels absurdly like mothering the girl.  But then she’s got experience with little Tony playing with her fingers and trying to pull her hair out in chunks.

“Here, I’ve got you” she continues to try to stand up as Rose supports her; un-slinging the tool belt from her shoulder she sits down next to the girl on the floor.   She hands her the tool belt and the girl riffles through the pockets and straps with glee. Eventually she produces an array of tools, and then she starts tinkering, slender fingers picking the pieces apart until she has a collection of gears and glowing bobbles spread out in front of her.

“who are you anyway?” Rose asks. “The TARDIS showed me a projection of you”

The girl looks up at her, eyebrows furrowing. “Don’t you know?” she asks curiously.  “Oh, you really don’t do you?”

“No,” Rose replies, she is beginning to suspect, but she needs it confirmed.

The girl frowns as the tool in her hand whirrs against the metal as she starts to pull it apart. “I’m the Doctor.”

It takes ten minutes for Rose to realize she isn’t paying any more attention to her, so she gets up and goes in search of Tidewald.

 

999

 

She finds Tidewald in the smithy, his face set in a hard line as he hammers a horseshoe into shape.  He brightens when he sees her and plunges the horseshoe into a bucket of cold water. Steam rises around him and he grins at her.

“Is she doing better?” he asks brightly as he pulls off his gloves and unties his apron.

Rose shrugs “I think so. Her tool belt made her happy” she sits back on a nearby stool drops her head into her hands.  She wants to cry.

Tidewald wipes sweat from his forehead with a dirty rag. “Well that’s something, Progress.”  He pulls up another stool and sits down across from her still mopping sweat off his face.

Rose sighs. “It’s just that, I was with this guy, and she’s like him as well. Its complicated”

Tidewald cocks his head to the side and frowns.  “I’m not quite sure I understand,” he says slowly.

Rose hangs her head in defeat “Why I’m asking you, I have no idea”

Tidewald gives her a sympathetic look.

“I’m stuck in the dark ages,” she continues. “And I’m asking relationship advice of a guy who’s probably never touched a girl in his life”

Tidewald shrugs; he wipes soot off his chin and then smears it on Rose’s cheek. “There” he says brightly “touched a girl” there is a touch of triumph in his voice.

Rose grins at him “remarkably forward thinking, you”

              Tidewald grins back and tries to wipe the soot off her cheek with the rag. “I try” he replies.

              Rose for a second feels secure and safe, and then some one clears their throat at the entrance to the smithy.

The Doctor stands at the door supporting her self on the doorframe. She holds a blanket around her shoulders and her bare feet are caked with mud with mud. She smiles a tight little smile. “I need saltpeter and aqua regia ” she says.

Tidewald looks at her disapprovingly; it is quite obvious she doesn’t have anything on under the blanket. “I can provide saltpeter, but you’ll have to talk to Abbot about aqua regia”

The Doctor’s lip curls in contempt as she looks at him; she turns on her heel and totters in the direction of the monastery’s main building to look for the Abbot.

Rose stares at Tidewald, who shrugs, and then she gets up and runs after the Doctor’s rapidly destabilizing form; She catches up to the smaller woman just as she teeters over and keels down into the mud. “Fuck you” she says.

“Well fuck you too” Rose tells her and helps her scramble to her feet, “do I need to do everything, here, come on, and you need to put on some clothes.”

The Doctor looses her footing again and goes down. “Mine were wet,” she sounds disinterested.

“Well you need to put on some dry ones before you see the Abbot. “Rose replies helping her up again. “I don’t remember you needing this much mothering. You could manage dressing yourself last time you regenerated”

The Doctor snarls yanking her arm out of Rose’s hand. “Fuck off” she pulls the blanket closer around her shoulders and stalks off leaving Rose standing astonished in the mud.

Tidewald jogs up behind her and quickly corrals her back into the smithy before she chases after the smaller women and smacks her.

 

999

 

Slowly the wounded are cleared out of the courtyard,   many did not make it, there is the drone of prayers and the scraping of shovels constantly coming from the cemetery plot.

“The battle at Maldon” Tidewald says by explanation “Stupid” he says.

Rose spends the rest of the day following Tidewald around helping him in the smithy, getting her hands dirty in the Abbot’s herb garden and even shoveling filthy hay out of the stables, she doesn’t want to treat the wounded, and isn’t asked to even though she can see several women in habits  moving among the soldiers. In the monks robe that Tidewald had given her, and her hair dirty and pulled back she can almost pass for one of them, still the other monks keep their distance.

 She doesn’t want to talk to the Doctor; she doesn’t want to see the Doctor, Ever, Again. She resolutely pushes the fact that this crazed Doctor is her only ticket back to her family, and to her Doctor to the back of her mind.

Tidewald is nice; he’s sweet and sensible, exactly the kind of guy she falls for, far too good for her and completely unavailable; if they had met in the 21st century she probably would have gotten him drunk and snogged him in the bathroom. 

Growing up in London all these things like gardening, or tending to livestock had seemed very inconsequential, her mum had had a friend out of the city who had kept chickens in her back yard until she had gotten in trouble with the neighbors. Rose’s mum had lamented the sudden interruption in her supply of fresh eggs.

Tidewald shoos a chicken off its nest in the dark, smelly chicken coop. With infinite care, he removes two eggs and gently deposits them in the wool-lined basket Rose is carrying before he moves on to the next nest.

“You need to talk to her,” He says so quietly that Rose isn’t even sure if he actually said anything or if it was her imagination.

“Bollocks” she replies.

Tidewald shakes his head and carefully shoos another hen out of its nest, and retrieves another clutch of eggs.  His progress is meticulous and painstakingly slow, each hen is carefully placed back into its nest after the monk has put the eggs gently into Rose’s basket.

Rose fumes at his silent contentment. She refuses to venture near the room where the Doctor has ensconced herself for the next two days. Tidewald shakes his head and offers her his cell while he sleeps in the stable with the horses.

The Doctor regards Rose and Tidewald with barely contained contempt and only tolerates them when she needs something.  Her health improves with every day and the less she needs Tidewald or Rose to help her the more brittle her moods become around them.

The more Rose sees of her the more she begins to hate her. Nothing seems to be left of the old Doctor, of her Doctor. Be it the aging skinhead with hollows under his eyes or the bright exited young man she loved. This Doctor, this little girl, is nasty, selfish, completely unlikable and more than anything else completely and utterly alien.

She eventually ventures back to the woods where the TARDIS landed, because the Doctor refuses to go near it.  She can no longer open the door as thick roots have wound away from the craft’s body and buried them in the ground; the doorframe has twisted so that the tumblers are trapped in solid unmoving wood.

Rose sits a few feet away from it and picks at the lichen that’s beginning to crawl up the base of the TARDIS; she rests her head in her hands and stares at it. She thinks she can see the moss and lichen creep up the side of the box. She stays there all day with tears prickling at her eyes until the evening when it begins to rain and Tidewald hurries out to find her and takes her back to the monastery.

The Doctor is waiting for them at the gate; she is dressed in the clothes Rose first saw her in again.  Black jeans, oxblood boots, the too large shirt, and her arms are crossed across her skinny chest. Her expression looks belligerent but she has a hot fever flush over her cheeks.

“Running away?” she asks imperiously, Tidewald ignores her, but Rose can’t help but meet her black-eyed gaze. Like looking into a black hole those eyes, nothing but pupil.

“Your dying TARDIS is a nice addition to the forest” she replies viciously.

The Doctor’s petrol dark eyes narrow at her and her mouth curls into a sneer “I’m trying to remember why I traveled with you” she says coldly.

Rose feels her cheeks heating up and her eyes prickling “What is wrong with you?” she asks desperately.  “You’re not my Doctor!”

 The Doctor’s head cocks to the side like a bird’s and she makes a little sound of annoyance.

“Forgive my anger” she says coldly “I can feel my genetic code slowly unraveling with every second I’m in this body. My TARDIS has gone mad and is trying to kill me” her voice is cool and she strokes her dirty fingers through her dark hair.

“I am not your Doctor, nor do I belong to anyone else for that matter, I’m _mine_.” The rage in the last word is palpable.

Rose smacks her across the face, hard enough to leave a glowing red mark on her dirty cheek, blood trickles from the Doctor’s lip. A tiny pink tongue emerges to lick it away in a gesture Rose has seen herself do millions of times. She smacks her again this time hard enough that by the next day there will be a dark bruise on the Doctor’s cheek.

 

999

 

It takes her an additional two days to finally summon enough courage   to confront the Doctor; she finds her sitting in the middle of her cell with the results of almost a week worth of disassembling her tools and careful machine work spread around her in a great spiral. She’s naked except for a pair of white cotton panties  and her hair is  harshly pulled back from her face with a bone clip, her skin is covered by an uneven crosshatch of thin white scars; water droplets catch in the marks that stand out from her skin. The Doctor doesn’t look up or do anything to acknowledge her.

“Don’t touch anything, everything is in order” the Doctor says sharply with out turning around as Rose tries to step around the little heaps of parts that are arranged around the room, probably with some mathematical precision that only the Doctor understands.

Rose frowns in dismay. This wasn’t a very good idea, and suddenly she wants to run back to the stables where she knows Tidewald is feeding the horses.

“No, I’m not putting on clothes. I can’t risk the static electricity interfering with this,” The Doctor continues, without looking up at Rose. “And the scars are a side effect of my last regeneration; my body was blown apart by a landmine.” She still hasn’t looked at Rose, her voice is dreamy and her mind is obviously elsewhere as she uses a narrow tool to solder slender panels to a circuit board.

Rose feels her cheeks heat with anger. “What you said about fucking off. I’m not going to do it”

“Sure, fine, whatever.” The Doctor murmurs, lost in thought. “I’ll have someone get you when I need you” she pulls a delicate sliver of copper out of one of the piles in front of her and begins to attach it to the rapidly growing contraption in her hands.

Rose feels like screaming in frustration.  She resolutely kneels down in front of the girl and wrenches the contraption from her hands, almost crushing it in the process.

“Hey!” the Doctor shouts her attention instantly on Rose.

“What is your problem?” Rose gets to her feet and holds it high above her head out of the Doctor’s reach.

The smaller girl snarls, “at the moment, you! I need to…” She jumps up trying to grab it out of Rose’s hand “…finish that before the TARDIS gets any worse”

“Fuck that! Tell me…” Rose punctuates this by taking a few steps back before the Doctor decides to tackles her and holds her down while she retrieves the device she was working on. “… What is going on!” she takes a few more steps back for good measure.

A thin trickle of blood emerges from the Doctor’s nose, she doesn’t notice it until it hits her upper lip. She’s hopelessly scrawny and now that she’s standing up and Rose isn’t worrying about playing keep-away with her she can tell that her whole body is trembling.

Realization dawns, everything the Doctor has told her suddenly has weight

“You’re dying”

All the energy drains away from the Doctor’s body, her knees wobble and she sinks back to the floor. “Meta-temporal genetic collapse… I think….” Her shoulders are shaking uncontrollably, she raises her fingers to scratch through the oily strands of her hair, some of the hair comes away with her fingers.

“I…nothing like this have ever happened before”  the first part is said in a voice of confused wonderment, as if this is some fabulous new experiment,“…and I…I killed her.”  Them the Doctor’s eyes glaze over, she loses her balance.

Rose almost isn’t quick enough to catch her before she cracks her head on the floor. She rushes forward and catches a flailing arm before the Doctor hits the floor again.

She’s still trembling when her muscles relax. Rose rubs her shoulders until the trembling stops; she can feel the boney ridges of her bones through her skin.

It is a few moments before the Doctor’s breathing evens out and her heart become steady. For a few moments, the only sound in the room is the sound of their breathing.

Rose strokes her hair, but the smaller women suddenly pull away and scrambles to the far side of the room.

“Get out!” She hisses . “Don’t touch me! Get out!” She curls up in the furthest corner from Rose, wiping blood off her face with the palms of her hands.

Rose gets to her feet and takes a tentative step towards her. The Doctor makes a sound like an angry rattlesnake somewhere deep down in her chest and Rose steps back in surprise.

“What happened, how did you end up like this?” she asks, still trying to take cautious steps towards the Doctor.

The Doctor takes a deep breath, and then lets it out again, her trembling seems to subside, but she refuses to move from the corner.

“I killed her” she says, her voice unexpectedly steady for a change, “Her name was Vera Starling”

“The girl in the projection? How?”

“When I regenerated, there wasn’t enough of _me_ left,” The Doctor pats her chest indicating to herself,  “so the regeneration energy latched onto the nearest source of genetic material” another deep breath, “she did not, _could not_ survive. Gallifreyan DNA is just too aggressive, and I’m now wearing her face.” Her laugh has a note of hysteria in it “and to top it all off I’m still dying, cell by cell instead of all at once”

Silence descends, the Doctor’s breath is even now, and Rose has to repeat what she had said and turn it over and over in her mind until it makes sense.

“You killed her” she tries out the first part “when you regenerated” the second part is hard to say, and seems to only come over her lips with great effort. Putting the two together seems to be an insurmountable task.

The Doctor heaves a great sigh, settling back into a sitting position, wrapping her arms around her knees.

“Yes, exactly” She says. “So you can imagine I’m a bit…ah” The self deprecating laugh is the most familiar thing the Doctor has done since they met “…not myself right now”

Rose takes another step towards her and when she doesn’t react closes the remaining distance, kneeling in front of the Doctor so they can see eye to eye.

The Doctor smiles, for a moment she can see the remains of her doctor in the wry expression.

              “Why didn’t you tell me?” Rose demands.

              The Doctor drops her head into Rose’s shoulder “I’m really confused Rose, nothing makes sense, my brain is made up of some one else’s cells, it’s all I can do to stay focused on fixing the TARDIS.

              Rose hesitantly wraps her arms around the Doctor’s shoulders, she strokes it comfortingly, fingers feeling bone through the skin.

              “Its ok, you can talk, I won’t be angry” Rose says.

              “You fixed me before” The Doctor says, it sounds childish coming from her mouth, a high pitched tenor.

              “I know” Rose says “Tell me what happened”

The Doctor takes a huge breath, seeming to steady herself. “I brought you here with the time scoop, this is a lacuna in time, I hoped it would be safe from well…well…everyone, I didn’t I consider myself a possible danger at the time” she lets out a harsh bark of laugher, the hysteria in her voice growing.

Rose tightens her arms around the Doctor’s shoulders, but the Doctor goes stiff. Her black eyes harden again, Rose can see the moment of lucidity fading, and the nasty selfish little girl returning

“I am not your Doctor, I am not anyone’s Doctor, I answer to nothing but my own will” she snarls but the fury ebbs away just as quickly as it appeared.

 The Doctor sighs “catastrophic genetic collapse aside, I would have regenerated anyway, but everything went wrong” The Doctor’s  bony fingers trace  along one of the long pale scars crisscrossing her arms.

A moment of silence stretches between them.

“When I finally managed to crawl back to my TARDIS, my genetic code was so corrupted that it didn’t recognize me, I managed to get control of some of the baser functions, to get you” another hysterical giggle “The time scoop, such a primitive piece of technology, didn’t even know  if it still worked.”

Rose stays quiet, hoping she’ll say more, but the silence between stretch out.

“What a way for the great Doctor to die” this laugh doesn’t sound hysterical “a botched regeneration, a malfunctioning TARDIS, alone on a battle-moon no one had set foot on in millennia!”

“I bet the daleks would feel cheated yeah” Rose says, holding the Doctor close,

“The whole universe would show up to spit on my grave if it could” The Doctor says.

“Now wouldn’t that be a sight?” Rose replies.

The Doctor’s laugh for once is bright and familiar,  “That would be _fabulous_ , how I would want it” She sobers  slightly, and starts to get to her feet. Rose helps her,  she weighs almost nothing,  and together they pick their way across the spiral of parts that the Doctor had built.

The Doctor stops periodically to rearrange some part that had been kicked aside in their struggle. There’s no rhyme or reason to the shape that Rose can see, but the Doctor seems to have some idea what she’s doing.

Rose steppes carefully over the elaborate spiral of parts and components the Doctor has created on the floor. The Doctor herself settles back into the center.

The worst of the fit seems to have passed, and with it the lucidity, she shoves  shoved Rose’s hand off her shoulder and picks up the contraption she had been building again, muttering under her breath in a language Rose didn’t recognize.

Rose pauses at the door for a few seconds before she leaves, compelled some how to watch the Doctor.

The Doctor ignores her, so she leaves.

 

999

 

“You want me to do what?” Rose feels her stomach clench up, dread builds in her chest, and she feels a bizarre need for self-preservation as if she is being threatened by the Doctor’s proposal

The Doctor is reclining on the bed a blanket pulled up over her legs, there is blood crusted on the edges of her eyes, and on her upper lip; her skin is ashen. “I want you to install this” The Doctor motions to the slender metal box in her lap. “I am going to give you instructions”

“You want me to lobotomize the TARDIS! How can you ask me to do that?”

“No, I just need to suppress some of its executive functioning so it won’t try to kill me while I repair it”

“But what will that do to you?”

The Doctor shrugs unconcerned “Nothing, my genetic code has already become so corrupt that my telepathic link is broken” she picks up the metal box and slides her fingers along the side, a pair of curved spikes flick out from the bottom. “Under the center console you’ll need to bypass a few barriers to access the temporal reasoning center. This needs to be inserted into the left frontal control lobe of the temporal cortex” She withdraws the spikes again and hands the box over to Rose.

 Rose holds it like it is a living thing squirming to get out of her hands.  The box is unnaturally cold and burns her fingers. “Why?”

The Doctor gives her a strange look “Because the TARIS is trying to kill me.” She says as she begins to pack away her tools “she likes you; she trusts you. That’s why I brought you here” Rose realizes this is the first time she’s heard this Doctor speak about the TARDIS as if it was a woman since she came here, before she had referred to it in clinical impersonal terms.

“To lobotomize the TARIDS”

“That’s a very crude way of putting it,” The Doctor says “but essentially, yes.”

That feeling of threatening dread is back in the pit of Rose’s stomach.  She swallows again, feeling sour bile rising in her throat.

“What will that do to me?” she asks almost dreading the answer.

For those brief minutes that the Bad Wolf entity had existed, it had been the TARDIS, inside the TARDIS, outside the TARDIS. It became the TARDIS in every temporal branch and pocket for all time. Rose swallowed again, even if she wasn’t the Bad Wolf entity, she is still inexplicably linked to the TARDIS in a very visceral way that even the Doctor admitted he couldn’t quite understand.

This Doctor shrugs and picks at the blood dried at the side of her mouth. “I didn’t really think about that variable” She says offhandedly, “I’m sure you’ll be fine.” She starts settling back down into the bed, pulling the blanket up around her shoulders. Her eyelids droop, seems like this explanation has used up the last of her energy for the day. Rose feels like she’s been dismissed as if she’s a common servant.

Rose turns on her heel and prepares storm out.                                         

“Take that boy you’ve made friends with you and find an axe. You’re probably going to need it” The Doctor calls as Rose slams the door behind her.

 

999

 

The TARDIS screams when Tidewald lands his axe in it, a sound like an injured wolf, a dying man, a hungry child all at once.  It ends when Tidewald pulls his axe back out of the door and readies for another swing, the echo of it still in their bones.

It has almost completely planted itself in the earth now, the blue paint peeling and chipping off new bark. Only the light on the top and the glass panes seem to be surviving the metamorphosis, but they are slowly being swallowed by the wood.

Tidewald swings again, the blade of the axe biting into the rotting wood of the door, another scream, Tidewald flinches, but pulls his axe back for another swing, and when the third axe strike lands, the noise is more of a defeated whimper than a scream.

Together Rose and Tidewald grab at the wet rotted wood of the door with their bare hands and pull it apart.  It feels like pulling apart flesh. The sensation nothing like taking apart rotting wood.

The door bursts open, like an unblocked pipe, spilling dark stagnant water out, broken rotted root fragments, crushed clematis flowers, soft clumps of Spanish moss floating on its surface.

Rose is swept off her feet by the torrent, Tidewald manages to stay upright, holding onto the broken fragments still hanging from the door hinge the water sluicing around his calves.

He makes a noise of disgust and helps Rose get to her feet but she almost loses her balance at the overwhelming stench of decay that wafts from the cavernous opening where the door had been.

The Doctor is a healthy distance away, sulking   under an overhang of oak branches, her arms wrapped around her chest but when the door bursts, she falls to her knees, vomiting. The sound of her retching Is the only noise in the silence following the TARDIS’s surrender. Apparently her bond with the TARDIS not as broken as she had made it out to be.

Tidewald covers his nose as he picks rotted plant matter off his legs, Rose detaches a long streamer of vine from her shoulders.

Even now, she can see the plants starting to gather around the broken portal, starting to knit across the wound and seal it up.

Rose reaches out and pulls the new shoots of ivy aside and gingerly sets her foot on to the   brickwork of the TARDIS’s entryway.

She feels deep vibration deep with in the machine, the cloister bell is still ringing, its sound now muffled. Presumably by the ever encroaching greenery that now formed the central column of the TARDIS.

If the control room of the TARDIS is reflection of the Doctor’s state of mind, of the overall personality of the collective person that made the Doctor, this must be madness.

The righteous bloom of plant life that choked the interior of the control room couldn’t have come from a sane mind. Under the plants Rose could see elegant filigree   decorating the metal support structure, delicate tilework now cracked on the floor. What ever this Doctor had been before the decline had set in, there was very little evidence remaining.

Rose rips down the fruiting body of a plant she doesn’t recognize, its tissue is a bright angry red, it oozes sap that stinks like ammonia. She pulls and pushes the stubborn plants away from her as she makes her way to the console. Tidewald is behind her, hacking at the underbrush, trying to clear more room for them to move.

The pools of water that lie equally spaced in a circle around the console are unnaturally still, no ripple breaking their surface despite Rose and Tidewald tearing through the plants. Between the pools there is grate work, little diamonds of metal, and below that, more unnaturally still water that is lit from below by steady green bioluminescence.

Tidewald makes a circuit of the console, clearing wood. The blooms and fruiting bodies that are attached to the top of the console refuse to move, and Rose still can’t tell where the metal ends and the organics begin, its as if in her absence the TARDIS has devolved more and more into a lumbering assortment of rotting meat.

Rose hauls a thatch of roots off one of the panels and has to dig her nails into it to pry it up, it opens with a reluctant creak, the inside lit with more bioluminescence, Rose reaches out and touches the shivering membrane that covers the internals.

“Hello old girl” She says kindly, and pushes through the protective membrane, the flesh ripping apart like skin.

She feels a faint sharp sting across her face as the membrane parts under her fingers revealing a pulsing protrusion of tubes and lobed structures.

She has to gingerly push apart the structures; they bare only the slightest resemblance to any familiar organs.  Rose remembers the doctor’s instructions, the shapes  bear only the faintest resemblance to what the Doctor had described.

A sharp pain stings her in the head, burrowing deep into her mind, she feels foggy, the world suddenly begins to look unreal, as if she was watching through some one else’s eyes.

She pushes the device further into the flesh of, what had the Doctor called it,  the temporal reasoning center.  She feels it  burrowing into the soft flesh

The TARDIS shudders around them, and Rose has to shut her eyes to stave off the overwhelming dizziness.

She feels  disconnected, all the sensations are unreal, she can taste rain and the smell of burnt cordite abruptly replaces the stench of decay.

Rose opens her eyes, struggling to the TARDIS as it is, not the glowing overlay of how it was or might be.

_Bad Wolf_

Her eyes burn, and hot tears well up.

She sees the Doctor steps cautiously into the TARDIS, her outline flickering, and overlaid with others, some Rose recognizes, some she doesn’t. She puts one foot in front of the other, as if at any moment the ship would shatter around her. The cloister bell hasn’t stopped ringing, and now below that there is moaning keening sound, like a wounded animal

It doesn’t break apart around her, and finally the Doctor strides confidently over to the central column, ripping away plants and flowers to reveal the panels below.  She places her palms flat on the controls, leans over and presses her cheek to it as if to hug the machine

“I know it hurts girl” She sooths, the control console under her   rattles in its moorings, as another terrified animal noise emerges from a speaker somewhere.

“I’m gonna fix it” the Doctor soothes, some how, this doesn’t seem to reassure the TARDIS, and the keening whine pitches down so low it makes Rose’s teeth hurt.

Rose leans over the console her hands still deep in the oozing, dripping innards of the TARDIS’s brain. Inside it is blood warm, and she can feel fluids pumping through the veins and conduits.

The coldness of the device the Doctor had made still burns her hand, she slowly withdraws her hand from the  open panel, white sap that burns her fingers oozes out as the spikes pierce the skin a/nd she tries to stop herself from drawing away in pain.

The Doctor is wasting no time at all, raising the panels, unhooking controls and removing casings, revealing more pulsing organic structures underneath. The structure of this TARDIS is so alien, Rose had always known the TARDIS was somehow alive, but she always imagined some kind of impossible machine intelligence, something far removed from the messy slimy existence of organics. Maybe this is just more evidence of  the Doctor’s madness, warping the TARDIS to match the chaos in her mind.

Rose tries to wipe the burning sap off her fingers, but they still sting. Inside the open panel , the milky sap is starting to clot over where she had put the box, the drying sap turning the purple red of a fresh bruise. Threads of bruise colored tissue spread like mushroom threads across the body of tissue.

The Doctor is still indiscriminately pulling tubes and cables out of the front panel of the console, ripping them out in handfuls and tossing them carelessly aside. There is a heap  growing around her feet, white sap oozing over her boots and the sound of the sap dripping down into the water below sounds unreasonably loud for the small cramped space of the control room.

This wasn’t repairing the TARDIS, this was destroying the TARDIS, the control column still rattles against its housing, like animal trying to break its chain.  The plants that have invaded it start squirming in their clear housing,  trying to wrap themselves around the Doctor’s arms,  trying to stop the carnage.

 The Doctor is muttering in a language  Rose doesn’t know again, the TARDIS wraps a vine around her shoulder, trying to pull her away from the  controls, but she  viciously yanks it free, tossing the broken loop of vine over her shoulder like trash.

Maybe the Doctor needs to tear out all the dying pieces of the TARDIS, remove the rotten meat before the rest can start to heal, but all the Doctor’s tools  are secure in her tool belt, and he would never have been so rough with the TARDIS.

Rose spots Tidewald by the quickly sealing wound of the door, his face pale,  he doesn’t seem willing to step further into the chaos.

 Apparently the Doctor’s  lobotomy box isn’t doing as good a job as it should at controlling the TARDIS.

The movement is so sudden and so unexpected that Rose doesn’t even see it until it is long finished. The Doctor is working inside the console, up to her embows in the pulsing organic guts of the TARDIS. Then she is thrust forward towards the far wall holding her stomach, as if trying to hold in the rapidly spreading red stain, or push out the spear of metal that protrudes from just below her ribcage.

The TARDIS moves on its own, the filigreed metal of the support struts writhe like snakes. Another spear of metal appears and forces the Doctor down to the floor, pinning her there like a preserved insect.

The Doctor tries to scream, or at least her mouth opens, but no sound comes out of it. The  pitch of the cloister bell changes.

 “Do something!” Rose yells at Tidewald, who is still  standing away from the carnage, holding onto the door frame while the TARDIS shakes and thrashes around them. Tidewald presses his lips tightly together and clings more tightly to the door frame. He shakes his  head sharply, an emphatic no, he isn’t going to help,  his soft eyes have gone hard and dark.

Rose lunges for where The Doctor lies, one spear of mental still embedded through the chest.  The Doctor’s blood oozes out through the metal floor grating and Rose hears the sound of it hitting water below.

A coil of vines whip out and wrap around her waist, pulling her away from where the Doctor is pinned, .

The Doctor is still, the metal spear twists in her abdomen as if making sure she is dead.

“What did you do?” She demands of TARDIS, then “what did you _do_?” she demands of the Doctor who is beyond all ability to respond.

The sudden heat of the regeneration makes her face prickle, the metal spear withdraws as quickly as it had appeared, settling back into the filigree work of the control room.

The golden mist settles on the control room like a warm miasma, the knot of light of the Doctor’s body slowly dissolves until the mist spreads evenly around the control room.  For a few seconds it hovers there, seeming unable to decide what it wants to do, but slowly it begins to churn around the  center console, filtering up into the pillar and then down again in a mushroom cloud of flickering gold.

Slowly, surely it begins to coalesces into a shape, a body. More and more of the golden light sucking up into the darkening shape of a man.

Tidewald gasps for breath new lungs begging forced open for the first time, a second Tidewald, the Doctor’s new regeneration.

For a few minutes there is nothing but the sound of the Doctor gasping on new lungs.  Tidewald remains  unmoving by the door of the TARDIS, his face impassive. Rose still kneels on the floor by the control console.

“ _I planned this?”_ the Doctor’s snarl is one-part rage and a one-part disbelieving surprise, his voice raspy with lack of use, he lunges for his duplicate.

Tidewald dodges out of the way with ease, and the Doctor goes down in a heap, still unused to the length of the new limbs.

“Of course you  did you imbecile, ” Tidewald echoes the Doctor’s snarl as he wraps his arm around Rose, pulling her to her feet, “Or did you think that this lacuna was natural?”

The Doctor takes another swing at him, but Tidewald sidesteps it again.

 “How does it feel to be the subject of your own manipulation?” Tidewald’s voice is mocking as he puts distance between himself and the Doctor, slowly moving towards the quickly sealing wound of the door.

The Doctor lets out a breathy laugh, his accent is different from Tidewald’s, harsher, more urban, closer to Rose’s than Tidewald’s lilting country drawl.

 “I become spiteful and petty in my old age” the Doctor says “Good to know” he sits back on the floor panting, reaching for the bloody shirt that his former incarnation had been wearing and pulls it on buttoning it up with clumsy fingers. It had been too large on his predecessor, but on his current body, it barely does anything to cover up his nakedness.

Tidewald’s expression is incredulous, “we’ve always been spiteful and petty, you know that; age brings clarity” his voice sounds cruel.

The Doctor gets to his feet, leaning on the center console, the plant life already beginning to reconfigure itself, ordering itself back into neat predictable shapes as the Doctor regains his faculties.

“I think you should go” The Doctor says, straightening up, beginning to lower panels back in place with more force than necessary. “Before I reconsider not killing you”

“Hah!” Says Tidewald scornfully, “as if you could!”

The Doctor’s expression grows darker still; he still has the bottomless black eyes of his previous incarnation; he glowers from behind the console “your meddling is not appreciated


End file.
